I know I'm not the first person to make this analogy, but it seems to me that what's going on right now in this country is similar, in a certain way, to what happened in
Dune. You could make a case for George W. Bush being Rabban and John Kerry being Feyd-Rauth in the sense that Kerry, while certainly an improvement over Bush, wouldn't really do much to change the status quo, he'd just be less likely to do something both incredibly stupid and damaging to the US, like, say, lying about going to war.
Note:If you're already familiar with the novel Dune
then you can feel free to skip the first two paragraphs
Frank Herbert's novel Dune is set in the distant future where humankind lives in a kind of galactic feudal society, with different noble families vying for power. One of these families (and I'm not going to go into too much detail about the entire series of novels, just enough to make my point) is the Harkonnen family, led by the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. The Harkonnens are a hedonistic, ruthless family which has control of the planet Arrakis (aka Dune), a planet that is mostly desert and is the only place where the important spice/drug known as melange can be found. The Baron has two nephews, Feyd-Rauth (his favorite and heir apparent) and Glossu 'The Beast' Rabban.
The native population of Arrakis is hostile to the more heavily-armed Harkonnens, but the Baron has a way of winning them over: he first gives the Governorship of Arrakis over to Rabban with orders to work them to death and otherwise subjugate them. The natives would, naturally, grow to hate Rabban, and at the right moment, the Baron would send Feyd-Rauth to Arrakis to depose him, making Feyd a hero in the eyes of the natives and pacifying them. Feyd wouldn't do that much to change the actual lives of the Arrakis natives, just be less obviously cruel. Of course things don't exactly work out as the Baron would like: a religious leader named Paul Maud'Dib (who, it turns out, is the heir of a rival noble family that the Baron thought had been killed) leads the natives in an uprising that not only ends up killing the Baron and his nephews but threatens the Emperor himself. It's far more complex than that but I didn't want to use up an entire post describing the plot.
I know I'm not the first person to make this analogy, but it seems to me that what's going on right now in this country is similar, in a certain way, to what happened in Dune. You could make a case for George W. Bush being Rabban and John Kerry being Feyd-Rauth in the sense that Kerry, while certainly an improvement over Bush, wouldn't really do much to change the status quo, he'd just be less likely to do something both incredibly stupid and damaging to the US, like, say, lying about going to war.
Just for the record, I'm not implying that the Bush family is as completely and utterly evil as the Harkonnen family. The Bushes are as ambitious and ruthless as any American family with dynastic ambitions has ever been, but they don't, for example, have young boys drugged for the purposes of having sex with them, as the Baron does. Whatever else they may be, they're not that bad. At least I hope not. That's the problem with these secretive families, you never know for sure.
But insofar as the behind-the-scenes machinations of ambitious and ruthless political organizations go, there's something to be said for comparing the current situation in the US to Herbert's fictional story. There is a conglomerate of power in this country (of which the Bushes are a part): a quartet of corporate, military, media and political power that has made a pretty nice, cozy world for itself and whose only real fear is that people will find out exactly what is going on and put an end to it. It's larger, more powerful, and more influential than the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about nearly a half-century ago. But it's not all-knowing or all-powerful, and they know it. They don't really want to go to the kinds of extremes the Harkonnens went to; it's too much work for them and in the end it could be dangerous (as history has shown: just ask Louis XVI), but neither do they want people who are a little too free, a little too nosy.
By design or chance, George W. Bush has turned into a poor man's version of "The Beast," firing up a large segment of the public, turning them against the entrenched establishment, and highlighting the fact that there is no one in power today willing to stand up against what's happening. And thus we have Senator John "Feyd" Kerry, whose campaign was given up for dead but has made a miraculous comeback, based on the perception given to us by the media that he is "more electable" than any of the other candidates. I've seen Sen. Kerry's speeches and read his stances on his website, and while everything sounds positive and wonderful there's no real sense of any vision of the future other than being simply the "anti-Bush." As far as offering a real alternative to the current situation in Washington, there's simply no "there" there.
Meanwhile, the man whose vision has inspired and is still inspiring people, Gov. Howard Dean, has been, for all intents and purposes, wiped off the map by the professional media. It's not Gov. Dean they're scared of (though some bloggers have noted that Dean's problems with them may have started when, in an interview with Chris Matthews in December of 2003, he talked about tearing down some of the media conglomerates that now exist), it's the idea of a well-informed, energetic population sick of the lies and deceit from both parties and looking to change not just the Presidency but the entire nation. And Gov. Dean is right: this isn't about changing a President, it's about hanging the country, the kind of change that frightens the powerful interests that are taking more and more control over our lives. It will take more than a Democratic President to change things for the better, it will take a movement, it may eventually even take a revolution.
This is not a smear on Senator Kerry. I happen to think he is a decent man who desires to be President, and who is well-qualified for the job. But wanting to be President is one thing, what you plan on doing once you're their is something else altogether. Assuming he wins both the nomination and the Presidency, will a President Kerry make any substantial changes to the corruptiom in Washington, decreasing the influence of money and the amount of corporate control in politics? Or will he just make enough superficial changes to pacify us without really upsetting things? This is the question that needs answering, will he be a candidate for the people, or is he just another Harkonnen candidate?